Sharp's New Quattron Plus TV Isn't 4K, But it Can Fake It

4K is great, but it's also expensive. Getting cheaper, but still a pretty penny. Sharp's new Aquos Quattron Plus is another option: a super high resolution HD TV that's not quite 4K, but that can play 4K content. It's a Faux-K TV.

Q+ televisions rep Sharp's exclusive Quattron panel which splits pixels into two subpixels to create the effect of 16 million subpixels from just 8 million real ones. The end result is a picture that looks better than HD, but doesn't actually have that many pixels to push. But more interestingly, the Aquos Quatron Plus plays 4K, despite not being 4K. And when we saw HD vs the Quattrons faux-K side by side, the difference was noticeable. A bigger step up than the difference from faux-K to the real thing.

Of course that's not a huge deal yet; there's hardly any 4K content out there. That's actually one of the biggest drags about buying a 4K TV. But at some point down the line, standard HD TVs are going to be stuck unable to play new, pretty stuff. But thanks to Sharp's scaling, the Quattron Plus is kind of future proof.

You could also just pony up for a 4K TV if you want to watch 4K content, but the selling point of the Quattron Plus is that it's 4K fakery should make it cost about half as much as a standard 4K unit. That fakery might not be crucial just yet, but it's interesting. And someday the tech -- if not the TV itself -- might come in handy.